Computer eye strain & light sensitivity hacks

How to change text and background color in Windows 10

Updated: August, 2018

Windows 10 has made life of those with light sensitivity and computer eye strain issues more difficult. In terms of text and background color adaptability to specific visual needs it is a step back when compared to Windows 7. But you can still have it your way. Below you may find detailed instructions on how to fully personalize your Windows 10 screen’s appearance to your, eye-friendly colors (anything, to any color). The instructions should also work in Windows 8.

This post is an update of the post 10 ways to change background color & reduce screen brightnesswhich shows how to change text and background colors in Windows 7, PDF/Adobe Reader, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome, and suggests a few apps which might help you decrease your screen’s brightness and glare.

Also, if you need some guidance in terms of picking the most comfortable colors for you (for example by using colors with minimal blue light content) see this post.

Important update: Windows 10 versions 1703, 1709 and 1803

To check which Windows 10 version you have: press Windows key > type “winver” in the search box > About Windows.

Windows 10, v.1607 and earlier versions:
How to change text and background colors

The intention of this post is to enable you to change the color of all the fields displayed by your Windows 10 screen (there will always be exceptions – icons, images, etc. – but they should be of minor importance). Moreover it should enable you to choose any color you like. You should be able to customize your visuals to the same extent as in Windows 7.

Reducing blue light only

If your principal concern is blue light and you’d be happy with making the screen appear warmer, i.e. more yellowish, you may enable Windows 10 Blue light mode:Settings > Display > Set Lower blue light toggle to ON. Just below that click on Blue light settings for further options.

Color options offered in Windows 10 by default

If you can live with the Windows 10 default options – changing most but not all fields to one of only 20 colors available:

you can find detailed instructions in this, or this tutorial, or follow these brief instructions:

Click on Windows icon in your task bar > Settings > Personalization > Colors > scroll down to the bottom and click High Contrast Themes > choose one of the High Contrast Themesfrom the Choose a theme drop down menu. Then click on appropriate color fields and choose your colors.

Full(er) customization of Windows 10 colors

Using this guide will give you access to many more color choices, however, sadly, it is still somewhat limited and not exactly what many of us would wish.

The instructions below assume you are currently using one of the Windows Default Themes. If you are already using a High Contrast Theme then you can skip to Step 5.

Step 1: Right click on desktop and select Personalize at the bottom of the drop down menu

Step 2: In the PERSONALIZATION window that opens up click on Themes (left column)

IMPORTANT: review all the themes available in this Personalization window and remember which is currently highlighted (e.g. the Windows theme in the image above). That is your current theme. You need to know this in case you want to go back to your current color settings.

Windows Default Themes allow only very limited changes to the colors displayed on your screen. To gain access to the full range of colors you must first set your visuals to a High Contrast color theme.

Step 4: Click on any of the four High Contrast themes (marked in a red square in the image above)

This action will change the colors that appear on your screen. Depending on the theme selected your screen might now look something like this

This image is a Screenshot of a Windows 10 screen while using the High Contrast Black theme (click to enlarge).

Don’t get distressed when you see a radical change in your colors when you select a high-contrast theme. This is only your starting point. You will be able to change all of the colors so that in the end it won’t be a high-contrast theme if you don’t like that. You can only make deeper adjustments to the colors by starting with a high-contrast theme.

IMPORTANT: If at any time you want to return to your initial (default) theme, just click on it (in the Personalization window) and the colors will immediately change back to the initial ones.

You are now ready to really start personalizing the colors on your screen.

Step 5: Press Win+R on your keyboard

to open the Run command window:

Step 6: Type control color (as in the image above) and click OK

This opens up the following Color and Appearance window (click to enlarge):

As you can see Color and Appearance window allows you to choose colors of windows background, text, hyperlinked text, disabled text; and both foregrounds and backgrounds of selected text, active window titles, inactive window titles and buttons.

Step 7: Click on the corresponding button (second or third column) to get the following Color window:

Step 8: Select one of the 48 basic colors or find your favorite color by clicking on it in the square color palette to the right

If you know the codes of your favorite colors you can type them in the appropriate text boxes (bottom right).

Step 9: Click OK

Repeat Steps 7 to 9 until you are fully happy with the colors of your new theme

If you are not completely satisfied with what you see, continue making changes (Steps 7 – 9).

Step 11: Click Save Changes

When you’ve clicked on Save Changes in the Color and Appearance window, your new theme should appear at the top of your Personalization window, under the My Themes heading as the Unsaved Theme.

Until you give the Unsaved Theme another name you can continue making changes to it: the Unsaved Theme should be highlighted, if not click on it and proceeding from the Step 5 above.

Step 12: Name and Save your Unsaved Theme

To name and save the Unsaved Theme it should be highlighted (if not click on it).

Next, right-click on the Unsaved Theme and choose Save theme from the drop down menu. In the window that appears, name the new theme and click Save.

After this point you can’t change this Theme any longer (you can only delete it – right-click on it when not highlighted and click Delete Theme).

However, you can still use a named and saved theme as the basis for further modifications: in Step 4click on the theme you want to use as a starting point (if the system is already using that theme you don’t need to click on it first). Then follow the above described procedure from Step 5.

Note: when you save your modified theme it will appear in Personalization/My Themes as the new Unsaved Theme, overwriting the previous Unsaved Theme (if there was one), but leaving the theme from which you started unchanged.

Changing the desktop color

If you want to change the color of (or put an image on) your desktop:

Right-click on your desktop, from the drop-down menu select Personalize to open PERSONALIZATION window.

In the left column Background should be highlighted. If not, click on it.

Select the image(s) you want to appear on your desktop, or (if you prefer solid color background) one of the following 24 default color options offered by Windows 10:

If you are not happy with the color options offered by Windows 10:

Press Win+R (as in Step 5 above) to open Run window.

Copy

control /name Microsoft.Personalization /page pageWallpaper

into the available text-box (as shown in the image below – Important: part of the above command is cut off in the image due to space limitation of the text-box – make sure you copy and paste entire command as specified above).

Press OKto open the following Desktop Background window:

To choose any color you want click on the More… (see it marked red in the image above). It will open the Color window (below), where you can select the color that is most comfortable for your eyes – or taste :).

Switching between different color themes is easy: once you’ve saved your customized theme you simply click on the theme you want in the Personalization window (see in the window on the right of the three Screenshots in the next section).

IMPORTANT: switching from one theme to another affects only what you see on your screen but not the colors of the saved documents. Note that in the Screenshots below the same MS Word and Excel documents are displayed in different colors depending on the theme in use.

To give another example: if someone sends you a black text on white background document and you open it, to you the document will look as specified by the theme you are currently using. (If you want to see its original colors you have to switch to one of Windows Default themes).

Also, reagardless of the theme you are using, if you make any changes to the text of that document, save it, and send it back to the author, it will still appear black on white to them (unless they’ve changed the visuals theme in the meanwhile).

The effects and limitations of changing color settings in Windows 10

With the above described procedure you can change nearly all of the colors displayed on your screen.

The images below show “milestone” screenshots of the above described color change process:

a Windows 10 Default Them (starting point)

a High Contrast Black Theme (at this point you would have completed Step 4)

Overcoming the deficiencies of Windows 10 with Windows 7

If you compare the last two images above you can identify the areas that one cannot change in Windows 10. Principally it has to do with the background around the “paper” (MS Word) and the Menu bars (MS Word and Excel). If you know of the way to do it within Windows 10, please, let me know!

The colors of these fields can also be changed. But you need Windows 7 to create the theme, save it for sharing and then open/install it in Windows 10. (I haven’t tested this thoroughly, but it seems that with this procedure you can transfer to Windows 10 and make effective any change that is possible in Windows 7.

[Update: December 2017. Unfortunately transferring themes from Windows 7 to Windows 10 has gotten more and more difficult (if not impossible) with the latest versions of Windows 10. You can use the provided Windows 7 test theme to check if it will work for you (find the theme and instructions further down this page.]

If you have access to Windows 7

You might already have a theme that works well for you in Windows 7. In that case skip to Saving your theme for sharing. If not:

Use a Widows 7 machine to change the colors of your display following the instructions for Windows 7 but MAKE SURE YOU USE ONE OF THE HIGH CONTRAST THEMES AS YOUR STARTING POINT, or you won’t be able to change all the colors.

In the Items section of Window Color and Appearance pay particular attention to the colors of 3D Objects and Menu(see red arrows in the image below), because changes in:

3D Objects affect the color of the space around the “paper” in MS Word Print layout view

Menuaffect the colors of menu bars

Saving your theme for sharing

When you are happy with the theme save it for sharing as a Theme Pack (*.themepack) file. In the Personalization window (of your Windows 7):

click on the theme you want to save for sharing

right-click on it and select Save theme for sharing from the drop down menu

give it a name

select where** you want to save it, and

click Save

** You’ll need to access this file from Windows 10 so save it on a portable storage device, Google Drive, Dropbox, etc. or just anywhere on your Windows 7 computer and send it to your Windows 10 machine via e-mail.

Next, go to your Windows 10 computer, find the Theme Pack file and open it (double-click). This will automatically install the theme in Personalization/My Themes of your Windows 10 computer and simultaneously also change the color settings of your Windows 10 screen to the ones specified by the theme you just opened & saved.

If you’d like to try out how it works and what you will get, open in Windows 10 this theme (created and saved for sharing in Windows 7). It should make the colors on your screen in Windows 10 look something like this:

That’s all. Following the instructions above you should be able to change all the colors displayed by your screen (except the color of the icons, images and perhaps some other minor objects). If I’ve missed something important, please do let me know, so I can fix it.

Closing remarks: In case you are interested in my Windows 10 experience

I upgraded my laptop to Windows 10 and kept everything else as before:

the same color theme as before (orange text on black background) that had worked well for me with Windows 7

Hence, the only thing that changed was the operating system, yet my vision and visual stress deteriorated quickly and significantly:

dry eyes – after a few days my eyes started feeling worse and worse

focusing – about two weeks into working with Windows 10 I started having difficulties (was OK at the start of the day but progressively worse after each hour of exposure to the point I started thinking about glasses)

general exhaustion – I also started feeling more tired after the usual daily computer screen exposure.

Downgrading to Windows 7. Within minutes of switching back to Win7 I knew it was a good choice by how my eyes felt. In a few days the above described symptoms improved.

Windows 10 issues with eye strain

I noticed a couple of issues that must be associated with eye strain:

when opening a new document/application the screen first flashes white (this was particularly disturbing because I normally work with black background)

f.lux blue light filter was disabled each time the screen is turned off and back on (this issue may have been fixed since or it is specific to some machines – I’ve installed Windows 10 on my other laptop to prepare this post and I haven’t noticed it there).

I find it difficult to believe there is nothing else to it!? If you’ve discovered any other issues that could be associated with eye strain, do let me know in comments or by writing directly to me.

Ps: If you found the post How to change text and background color: Windows 10 update useful, please consider LIKING, REBLOGGING, and/or SHARING it below.

54 thoughts on “How to change text and background color in Windows 10”

testfered, thanks for letting me know. As suggested in the update near the top of the post, the instructions worked up to version 1607 of Windows 10.

There are new instructions for version 1703 (also linked above). Based on the feedback, these instructions also work with version 1709, though not perfectly, so another set of instructions is necessary. No feedback on 1803 as of today.

Windows 10 is a terrible OS as it is a serious step back in the ability for the user to CONTROL it. Less options everywhere and it get worse with each new big updates, and so we get annoyances like eye strain issue. So… I wasted dozens of hours to find a DECENT solution. High-Contrast themes are a good one but it screws up many elements of the global interface :/

It gives a better feeling. There are many others themes, but I use this one.

The advantage of UXStyle is that he is updates-compliant. Unfortunately, it won’t work with Creators Update and later, so it can be used only with Anniversary/LTSB 2016.

For “Creators” Update (pfff) and later, UltraUXThemePatcher ( https://www.syssel.net/hoefs/software_uxtheme.php?lang=en ) sounds mandatory. Problem : when there are some windows updates, you will need to download the new version and install it. A way to avoid that is to block Windows Update or disable the service… which is difficult since this month, as Microsoft made sure than the service is restarted even if the user voluntarily disable it.

You can only change your text color (see top of the article) if you are happy with one of the 20 default colors that Windows 10 offers.

If you want a more specific color for your text, you have to go to high contrast, change text color and also change everything else to how you want it (which, in your case, appears to be just the way you already have it :(:

(At least that is how it was about a year and a half ago, when I used Windows 10 for the last time). Have they changed anything for the better in the meanwhile?

Maaate Thanks you so Much I have just been able to make a perfect theme 9forme) finally got a pale grey screen with green and grey highlights and black text it is so restful on my eyes from the lightning laser glare of stark white. Have a great Xmas and New year You have certainly given me a great gift :D

Dear Uroš:
Wow! Wow! Wow!
Thank you so very much for posting this VERY, VERY Helpful Guide !!!
In Windows 7, All of my Documents (I’m a writer) had a wonderfully comforting & lovely Light-Aqua Color. Then, when I recently upgraded to Win10, I Looked & Looked & Looked for how I could get my Text Background Back .. & thought: “Well, maybe I’m just STUCK with STARK White”! . . . . That is, Until I found your Excellent, Clear & Most Helpful Guide on This Page!!
I appreciate it GREATLY!!
– Chuck

Fantastic. Well researched. Easy to follow. Thanks so much for posting this.
Just one question. Is there a way to change the color of desktop icon label text. Windows 10 seems to select either white or black only. The photo I use for a background has both black and white areas, making the white, or alternatively black, text invisible. Is it possible to change the color of desktop icon text?

This is “easy to follow” for somebody who is already familiar with the general process of changing colors, from W7 for example. Otherwise, no. Thanks in no small part to the geniuses at Microsoft who are continuously revising software functions, layout, buttons, with random lack of functionality and general non-intuitiveness. (My W10 color change screens don’t look or function like the tip.)

Mike, I am sorry to read you couldn’t work out the colors on your Windows 10 machine. I intended to make it as easy as I could, but you are right – once I know how to do it, I might skip some steps that seem obvious to me but not to someone who’s never changed colors.

Also, the images may rise doubts, because they are different from what you might get on your computer …

As suggested my hope was to make it easy to follow for anyone, and obviously, that is not the case.

But, let me try to help you figure out where you get stuck. In doing so you might be able to help me understand how I can improve the article – and that would be a win-win situation :) Just describe up to which point you follow the instructions OK and describe where and how you get stuck…

You are right! In most cases it will make sense to use the monitor’s feature to decrease brightness.

For those sensitive to flicker that might not be such a good idea, because many/most monitors use pulse width modulation (PWM) – i.e. make flicker of the screen more noticeable – to reduce its brightness. (Those people should rather try the dimming function in Iris or f.lux apps).

Thanks also for reminding me that I should comment on this in this and the previous post on this topic.

However, eye sensitivity to computer screen brightness is different from person to person. It also changes (often increases) as we age. Many people use computer screens at full brightness and never complain of eye strain. Some, like you, lower the brightness of their monitor through manufacturer’s settings and that works.

In fact, many GLARminŸ readers probably went through these two phases.

But for some of us there comes a point when the minimum monitor’s brightness setting is just not dim enough, due to increased computer light sensitivity of our eyes. The above article (and this site for that matter) principally addresses these people.

No, adjusting the screen brightness is NOT really a good solution. It works if everything in screen is bright, but if you encounter something dimmer (like in games), you need to readjust the monitor again… and again. And whay if a part of the screen is bright and another part is dim?
Microsoft really did a disservice for people with eyesight problems while designing the 10 GUI. I will try later when I have more time to create a low-contrast theme for myself, according to these excellent instructions.

The only problem with high contrast mode is that there were changes made in the look of the screen. So for example my selfmade music map,(not the standard map) stays on the right side (the details window) white and i cannot chage the width of that part.
The taskbar icons also becomes different. The lint on the top stays white. That kind of things i can’t get under control.
Sorry for maybe bad English.

AadK: thanks for the comment. You are right. High contrast themes are not a perfect fix. Even after one has tweaked them to the extent possible. Those of us who have issues with default screen colors (black on white) often have to settle for the least bad solution – far from being optimal :(.

Hi there, this is really great, it helps me a lot. I am very sensitive to UV rays and blue light so changing the background is a must for me.
I’ve come across a problem I don’t know how to fix though. In Windows 7 I could use the high contrast themes, change them to what colors I like and still be able to open e.g. excel and see different highlighted cells in an already saved spreadsheet (whether they were highlighted in yellow, green, red or blue didn’t matter). With Windows 10 that doesn’t seem to work, everything is just coming up in the background color that I chose in the theme. Have I missed a step somewhere? I need to use spreadsheets all day long and can’t stare at a white screen but also need to use the fill in option in excel a lot. It would be great if you could help with this.

I have the same problem with excel (and I am back to Windows 7 – I’d be curious to know how you managed to see higlighted cells in Win7? – I don’t :(. I don’t depend on this feature too much, so I haven’t looked for a solution.

One way arround that problem is to use the invert mode with a good blue light filter app. You should still be able to customize your appearance (I can with Iris in Windows 7). ust be careful with printing (you won’t get the same colors as the ones you see on your screen – you’d have to revert to a normal, non-high-contrast theme, to see exactly what will come out on your printer).

If you decide to go for it, please, let us know how it’ll have gone. Just write a comment below – it will help everyone else with this problem – I am sure you are not alone with this problem.

I checked a bit: this and this pages from Microsoft imply that high contrast themes just don’t work with cell colors – you can select any color you want, but it will never show on the screen :(. Other hits I’ve checked also failed to solve the problem.

So it may be that the suggestion with a blue light filter app is the only solution to this issue? If you manage to find another solution, do let everyone know!

THANK YOU SO MUCH for this extraordinary help you gifted to us!!! Before I read your article, I made a total mess by trying to change colors and it now my Windows looks tasteless, so I was happy to see this paragraph:

“IMPORTANT: If at any time you want to return to your initial (default) theme, just click on it (in the Personalization window) and the colors will immediately change back to the initial ones.”

But I didn’t see the “Default” link. Is it because your instructions are only for Win 7? If you happen to know where I could find the “Default” button in Win 10, please let me know? I can’t live with this color mess I made…..Thanks again ever so much! :-(

To restore the default settings find the Windows theme you want (in the Personalization window) and click on it.

Your personalization window should look something like this (there might be other themes – the ones you’ve created in it):

The themes you see above are the “default” Windows themes. The ones in the first row have white background, the ones in the second row (within the red mark) are High Contrast Themes: the first three use black background, the last one – white.

Thank you!! This is SO helpful. Question, is there a way to see different font colors in outlook, microsoft etc? Only asking bc when i did this (and loved it) I had to switch back because people were responding to emails in different colors and I couldn’t tell.

I don’t have any experience with MS Outlook and how it responds to theme color changes. Also, I am not using Windows 10 anymore, so I can’t check.

But if it is like with other MS programs (I extensively use Word, Excel, IE), in principle the theme color changes apply only to what one see on your screen. The documents are in principle still black on white background (unless you make any color changes to the document itself – see on this next paragraph). When such documents are shared/sent with/to other people, they see the colors as defined by their Theme (mostly black text and white background – i.e. one of Windows Default themes).

However, when you are not in one of Windows 10 Default Themes (black on white) and you start changing colors in the documents themselves (not through Personalization and Theme Settings, it becomes trickier. I do recommend that before sharing/sending such documents, you first check them in a Windows Default Theme, to make sure the colors are as you want them to be. (Switching back and forth between themes is just a matter of a few clicks).

Thank you for this post! It was so helpful!
So, with regard to Office Word, there is no way to see different font colours or highlights when using a personalized theme? I ask because when I write and update documents, I change font colours of sections that are updated/completed, as a visual cue to myself. I also highlight sentences that need particular attention. I can see all the different colours in “print preview”, but that doesn’t help me while I work on the documents :(

Yes, when you need to highlight text or change font color within the text, MS Word gets messy. As mentioned I am back to Windows 7 (after about 3 weeks with Windows 10), so I cannot check, but even with Windows 7 that allows a lot more freedom in color customization than Windows 10, this is an issue. So, for whatever is worth, in Windows 7:
– changes to text color and highlighting works normally as long as your personalized theme is based (built upon) one of the Windows basic/classic (black on white) themes (not a High Contrast theme)
– personalized themes based on one of the high contrast themes allow you to see highlighted text as such (although the color is usually not the one you picked). Unfortunately not all colors are visible in the editor, but many are.

I just stumbled across this after the Windows 10 Anniversary pack installed and the process doesn’t seem to work. Maybe I’m just doing it wrong? I have sever light sensitivity, so reading the procedure was difficult.

So far, the only option that seems to work for me is using the Windows Magnifier and inverting the colors. It’s ugly, though, and there’s no easy on/off toggle for it. Any suggestions?

Also, have you found a decently visible cursor that isn’t a huge, red, ugly arrow? I haven’t :P

Great tip! I was previously using another dark theme method (http://eversins.deviantart.com/art/Dark-Grey-Windows-10-theme-High-Contrast-OLD-582035597) but I quite like how simple and functional your method is. I had noticed that the standard themes give much less color customization in Win 10 than previous versions of Windows, but hadn’t noticed that switching to High Contrast brings some of that customization back. I now have a very decent and pleasant fully dark theme by following your tutorial here. Thanks for this!

Thanks very much for your most painstaking article. It will greatly help me to get the right type-colour and background. Why are Microsoft so bad at clear explanations ? Forgotten what it’s like for a layman ? Too lazy ? V iew their customers with contempt ?

I missed the inability to change the title bat text color as one of the deficiencies of Windows 10 (towards the end of the post, section: The effects and limitations of changing color settings in Windows 10).

The only way to set the color of title bar text that I can think of is to follow the same procedure recommended in the post for the other limitations, namely to use Windows 7 to create/adjust the theme and than open the theme in Windows 10. In Windows 7 it is very easy to do as you probably know.

If you don’t have access to a Windows 7 computer, I’d be happy to do it for you. All I need is for you to send me the Theme Pack (*.themepack) file of your favorite theme and the color (RGB) you want for the text. (Also consider sending the RGB for the text color of the inactive title bar.

(The same section in the post also explains how to make a Theme Pack file in Windows 7 – I hope it is the same in Windows 10 – I have no way to check right now).

Or you can just tell me the color you want for the text and I’ll send you the corresponding Theme Pack file. Than you can adjust the rest of the colors.

Sorry if this solution is disapointing – I know it is not an elegant one :(